3. Distributed application development

The .NET platform offers various possibilities for distributing the different parts of an application. This diversity allows the programmer to choose the most suitable technology to use, but can also complicate the decision on which distribution architecture to adopt.

Two .NET components can communicate via Web services, .NET Remoting, COM+ enterprise services, message queues or direct TCP connections.

In this section, we present only the first two approaches, namely Web Services and .NET Remoting. The decision as to which of these technologies to choose has no universal answer. Rather, it depends on the nature of the application, the desired perspectives and performance.

We've rounded off this presentation with two other mechanisms: ASP.NET, which enables an application to be accessed from a thin client, usually...